Gary Snyder was born on May 8, 1930, in San Francisco, California, the first of two children born to Harold and Lois Snyder. His family moved to Washington and then to Oregon, and Snyder attended high school in Portland, Oregon. After graduation, he enrolled at Reed College, Portland, graduating in 1951 with a bachelor of arts degree in anthropology and literature. Snyder then entered a graduate program at Indiana University but left the following year and returned to San Francisco. In 1953, he entered the University of California, Berkeley, pursuing graduate study in Oriental languages. During this period, he also worked as a lumberjack, trail maker, and forest firewatcher. He also became part of a community of West Coast writers which included Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, who became the leaders of the Beat Generation in the 1950s.

In 1956, Snyder traveled to Japan to study Zen Buddhism and Japanese language...